AP reports Lou Dobbs has "become a publicity nightmare for CNN"
August 02, 2009 2:07 pm ET by MMFA Staff
From an August 1 Associated Press article headlined "Lou Dobbs challenges his own network":
He's become a publicity nightmare for CNN, embarrassed his boss and hosted a show that seemed to contradict the network's "no bias" brand. And on top of all that, his ratings are slipping.
How does Lou Dobbs keep his job?
It's not a simple answer. CNN insists it is standing behind Dobbs, despite calls for his head from critics of his reporting on "birthers" - those who believe President Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States despite convincing evidence to the contrary. The "birthers" believe Obama was born in Kenya, and thus not eligible to be president.
Dobbs' work has been so unpopular that even Ann Coulter has criticized him.
[...]
"He's embarrassed himself and he's embarrassed CNN," said Brooks Jackson, a former CNN correspondent. "And that's not a good thing for any network that wants to be seen as a reputable, nonpartisan news organization."
So who needs the headache?
Klein said Dobbs does a smart newscast that explores issues that get little in-depth attention elsewhere, such as trade with China, health care funding and the stimulus plan. He suggested Dobbs' CNN work is unfairly lumped in with his unrelated radio show, and that he's judged on the show he did a couple of years ago, when Dobbs became a political target for his campaigning against illegal immigration.
The two men sat down after last year's election to make changes, aware that the anti-immigrant Dobbs' image ran counter to the brand CNN was trying to create. CNN calls itself the network of unbiased reporting compared to conservative commentators on Fox and liberal ones at MSNBC.
Since then, Dobbs has been doing a relatively straight newscast, Klein said.
Previously:
Facts get in the way of Klein's claim that Dobbs radio show is separate and apart" from CNN
CNN exec concedes Dobbs is "opinionate" -- but that's the least of his journalistic faults
as a centrist type, i agree with many things he has put forward, but at times he goes into the foxnews playbook, as his ratings tank before this, he has chosen to do a foxshow, he needs to go to fox soon, his new show would be great between beck, and kkklanity next to the new palin show on fox coming up.....
Amazing!
All the sophistication of a 6 year old.
The COLB *is* the birth certificate. The birthers have played games with words, pretending it isn't, but the state of Hawaii has said definitively it is. When a citizen asks for a birth certificate in Hawaii, the state gives him what it gave Obama, and that would serve to get a passport, join the army, etc. Hawaii does not generally issue the long form except under special circumstances.
The Bush years saw something very close to the establishment of a true dictatorship.
Now - whatever the limitations of Obama - BO's election was a dire blow to the whole scheme, which was already imploding due to the incompetence of many players.
So what's next? A total divorce from reality. Obama the racist. Obama the Kenyan. Obama the antichrist.
The vitriol of the rhetoric is truely frightening. It reminds me of the rightist rants against JFK in the run-up to the assassination.
A fine piece overall, AP, but you shouldn't fan the flames of inaccurate conventional wisdom. That Fox is made up of conservative commentators is beyond challenge (thus mocking their "fair and balanced" moniker), but MSNBC does not lean to the left, certainly not the way Fox does to the right. Yes, they have Olbermann and Maddow and now Schultz, but they also have Scarborough (whose show is as long as the other three combined), plus they give airtime to Pat Buchanan seemingly any time he wants it. And while you can glean enough of Chris Matthews' comments to paint him as a liberal, it's even easier to do so to paint him as a conservative (I'd call him a moderate to slightly conservative, who tends to be enamored by whoever he perceives to have both power and momentum). Add it up and MSNBC is, how shall I say it? Fair and balanced. Maybe 5-10 degrees to the right.
Frances
What facts do you need? If Lou Dobbs stated that man never set foot on the moon, would you expect AP to cite facts to disprove him, or would you just assume Dobbs is spreading nonsense?
Daniel .......... Toronto
As I've written multiple times, although Lou Dobbs can and should certainly be commended for his genuine passion for public policy reform (in a still insufficiently reform-minded country), he suffers from an all-too-transparent pro-American bias and economic nationalist slant.
There can be little doubt he crosses the line far too frequently, gratuitously inserting his personal political opinions into his newscasts. Although up to a point, this practice can be perfectly acceptable and even engaging; when it reaches a certain threshold, the viewer inevitably begins to question the intellectual and journalistic integrity of the entire broadcast -- which benefits no one.
We need to keep the national public policy debate as intellectually honest, consistent and rigorous as possible. Unfortunately, Lou Dobbs does little to help us achieve this end.